Range Report 03/07/2009

We went out to the Super-Seekrit Schutzenfest 2009 location to make sure of the facilities and get a better idea of the Plan of the Day. After the work was done, our host asked if I had brought any guns with me.

Funny you should mention that . . .

I brought my Marlin 60 just in case the shooting window opened. The scope was close to sighted-in, but as I mentioned before, it was only close. I got it much closer using coke cans as targets. I'd have been able to get it 100% zero'd if I'd used paper targets, but by the end of the day one of the cans fell into top/bottom halves when it was picked up, the gun was so accurate. Close enough. I shot up a box of .22 and then our host's granddaughter came around and ran through a couple of magazines full. The Federal ammo was fairly clean, but the action got nasty-dirty but fast (as usual) with the Remington.

Then, for kicks, I did a couple of draw-and-fire drills with my Kel-Tek. On a coke can, from conversational distances, I got a hit and a near miss, then a near miss and a hit, in 2-shot drills. Unsighted (point shooting) fire. I was pretty happy with that.

Then, when I went to retrieve the cans I noted something strange: a bright U shaped channel in the clay, leading to a perfectly circular hole in the backstop. Knowing that bullets stop pretty fast in dirt, I dug in.



How many of you have ever recovered bullets from your daily carry weapon? It's a pretty neat thing to be able to do. I also got a few rounds from the Marlin, including some that were all smashified, and the one below. This is a pretty nice demonstration of why those nasty-dirty Remington hollowpoints are worth the effort:



There were also a few miscellaneous other rounds that were sitting on the face of the backstop since we had dug it up a little to get it ready for the Schutzenfest.



I found out the hard way that using both eyes on a scoped rifle is much harder to do when night is coming on fast.

I also got a(nother) dramatic demonstration of how slow .22LR rounds travel. It's a little trippy having to wait a second between the report of a gun and the jumping of the target.